In current content delivery networks, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used as a main delivery mechanism. Since the asset, or data such as a title or content, is delivered in a non-secure environment, this allows the delivery node to verify the asset. Then, the delivery node can decide to cache the asset based upon the content verification. In this way, the delivery node can serve the same asset to different subscribers. This leads to a significant reduction in the round trip from the client to server, which improves the user experience.
The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)/Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has recently released HTTP 2, within which, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is mandatory for HTTP traffic. This means that in the future, content will be delivered via an end-to-end secure connection. Major browsers are being developed to support the new standard.